Sugar We're Goin' Down (Swinging)
by EmilyFuckingFitch
Summary: It takes three weeks for their alliance to start falling apart, for their pretense of utopia to unravel. She'd hoped for it to have never come to this. But it has. Set after 2x14 and after the Mt. Men are defeated. Lexa never betrayed Clarke in this universe.


It takes three weeks for their alliance to start falling apart, for their pretense of utopia to unravel.

She'd hoped for it to have never come to this.

But it has.

"I'll talk to them, Lexa. Just—please, we can't have another war," Clarke begs.

"We both knew this would happen from the beginning, Clarke," Lexa says, her expression, hard. "The Sky and the Ground were never meant to touch." She shakes her head, as though Clarke was naïve to believe any differently, as though Clarke was foolish to hope.

If it were anyone else, they would fallen for this act, would have believed that Lexa saw truth in her own words. But Clarke knows her—Clarke _knows_, can see through it all from the look in Lexa's eyes and the way they glisten under the light of the candles that Lexa was hoping the same.

Lexa looks away.

"We are much too different."

Clarke steps forward, and again, and again. Until she can feel the heat from Lexa's skin on hers.

"You can't possibly believe that."

Lexa's jaw clench. "My people do, Clarke." A pause. "And so do yours."

"And do you?"

At that, Lexa doesn't respond. She stares at her, studies Clarke's features, her eyes, her cheeks, her lips—looks at her like she's searching for an answer that Clarke doesn't have. She leans to catch Clarke's lips roughly, pushes her back to their bed, covers Clarke's body with her own until their limbs move in tandem, until she quells the words that they've both left unspoken.

/

(With Lexa, she feels the weightlessness of space, feels the oxygen filling her lungs like the very first day she came to Earth, like the vivid colors of the grass and the flowers she never had the chance to see—

It feels like falling from the sky to the ground, and Clarke wishes with her entire being that she never has to land.)

/

It's not five days later that one of her own dies by the hands of Grounders.

_("They do not belong on our soil, to walk among us, Heda."_

_"Indra, they have fought along side us during war."_

_"But they will fight against us. They are not one of us. They never will be.")_

It's not six days later that the Sky People yell for retribution, for atonement.

_("Clarke, if you don't do something, we will. With or without you."_

_"We can exist peacefully. Together. We can't afford another war—we've lost too many of our people."_

_"We'll lose more if we don't do anything. Don't you see that?")_

It's not seven days later that they act on their words.

_("Blood must have blood, Commander. They kill one of ours, we kill ten of theirs. Do not tell us you have gone soft for the Sky Princess, that you have forgotten the ways of the Grounder."_

_"No, Indra. I have not.")_

It's not nine days later that Lexa and Clarke both know their alliance will soon become a memory, a story that only one of them gets to tell.

Clarke grips Lexa's hand tightly, hopes that she won't have to be the one to make that choice.

/

"My people will be raiding your camp in a week, Clarke."

Clarke doesn't turn around. She continues to paint with soft strokes, of the utopia she still yearns for; a world that she wishes could exist between the two of them.

"I know."

Footsteps, then:

"I cannot stop them."

Clarke nods solemnly, puts her paintbrush down. She knows what Lexa means, understands the spaces in between the words that Lexa's left unsaid. She means that the Grounders will not stop until they have won, that Lexa will have to lead her people until one of them surrenders—

that this is the end, of them, of what they have, of one of their lives.

Clarke turns around, comes face to face to Lexa, her hair matted from the storm outside. She cups Lexa's cheek with her hands, places a tender kiss on her lips.

She tastes too much like rain.

"I know."

/

(That night, Lexa leaves traces of charcoal on her chest, her stomach, her thighs—all over her skin like stardust; looks at Clarke like she's the Sun she'll never again have the chance to touch, and Clarke can't help but bite Lexa's bottom lip when she tumbles down, until she tastes metal in her mouth, until the smell of the earth invades her senses.

They free-fall.)

/

The coming days are quiet, but her mind is not. Her time becomes filled with meetings with Abby and Kane, of talks of warfare and talks of sacrifices that must be made. Even though she saturates her head with war plans she never wants to bring to light, all she hears is the sound of Lexa's laugh, the huskiness of her voice, and the gentle words that she used to whisper in her ear whenever nightmares woke her from her sleep.

/

_(We were born into this, Clarke. Do not blame yourself for the choices you had to make for your people. We live to survive. Our people live to live. Those are the sacrifices that we must make.)_

_/_

She's lying on the grass, a few yards outside of camp, looking up at the sky. In one of her hands is a note, the one that Lexa left the night they parted ways, the one Clarke left unopened—because she knows what it says, and she knows that they won't stop the nightmares from invading her mind when she lets herself sleep. She knows that it won't make this impending war any less real.

She hears footsteps approach her.

"They're worried, Clarke."

It's Bellamy, but she doesn't answer him. Instead, she opts to stay where she's lying, where she and Lexa used to sit not too long ago during the warm summer nights, where Clarke used to point to her of all the constellations in the sky, where they used to exchange stories of their people, of their childhoods, where they used to wish on falling stars to stay where they are.

Clarke wonders if Lexa's doing the same, if she's staring at the same night sky, too.

"They're worried about you," Bellamy says again, undeterred. "About your leadership. They think you won't do what you need to do to win the war."

Clarke inhales deeply, exhales.

"Do you think that, Bellamy?"

Bellamy hesitates.

"I know that you'll do what you have to do for us to survive, just like you always have."

Clarke's grip on Lexa's note tightens. She swallows hard, before nodding.

"Whatever it takes."

/


End file.
